Tag Archives: Executive

The press in India, like the press elsewhere, holds on to the belief that it is the Fourth Estate of democracy, after the legislature, the executive and the judiciary, although the press in India, as much as the press elsewhere, finds its institutional and individual integrity increasingly under question.

In an article on the Open Page of The Hindu, Radheer Mahendrakar uses the results of the recent general elections to argue that the people are the real Fourth Estate, acting as a more effective countervailing force than the press, especially when they perceive a threat to democracy.

Mahendrakar says the collective wisdom of the people—the “miracle of aggregation“—showed up when Indira Gandhi clamped the Emergency, when V.P. Singh indulged in social re-engineering, when the BJP made religion an electoral platform through Hindutva, and when regionalism threatened to get ahead of nationalism.

“For generations, we have accepted the ‘press’ as a vital element of democracy….

“In politics, it is fair to say that the Indian voter is the Fourth Estate representing a counterbalance to the political parties of different ideologies—the left, right and centre. Time and again, the Indian voter has drawn the contours of do and don’ts in politics and chastened the parties when our democracy showed signs of dilution.”

Implicit in the point is the suggestion that a profit-hungry media in its quest for eyeballs and bottomlines, has forgotten, abandoned or is ignoring some of its fundamental duties. In other words, despite the press, the people as a group seem to be able to reach a decision that is very likely the correct decision.